This Week in Education

Last week I linked to an article that mocked education research as a circus, to which some understandably took offense. Here's a recent ASBJ article on the same topic that may be more balanced but is no less scathing (Politics and Research). Advocates have learned to attack research methods ever more swiftly, even as research has gotten better, some say. Think tank "research" has all but eclipsed academic research in the policy debate in Washington. Not that better research would make a difference. Remember class size? Politics, budgets, ideology, and -- my favorite -- personal experience -- trump even the best studies. But there are a couple of folks out there doing good work, we're told -- not the usual suspects.

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Lincoln Caplan provides us with some impressive new numbers in his recent Slate magazine article on Wendy Kopp's Teach For America: Almost $500 million raised, a goal of 4,000 new teachers per year by 2010, a 98 percent acceptance rate, annual revenues nearing $120 million (up from $10.5 million seven years ago). Caplan names TFA the country's largest reform effort in the K-12 education space.

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Last night's Colbert Report interview with the founder of Craigslist included much discussion of DonorsChoose.org, the organization that links donors and individual classrooms directly:

Very impressive.

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If you're wondering why the DC education blogs are so quiet today, it's because all the best-dressed education folks are gathered at a big AEI event on the supply side of school reform -- the "intriguing and daring" reformistas who are attracting all the attention (and funding) despite their small scale, mixed results, etc. Check out the agenda and the papers here.

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Continue reading "The Genius Behind Teach For America" »

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Thanks to a friend for passing along the attendees list for the White House NCLB list, which features pro-NCLB civil rights groups (Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights President, Janet Murguía, National Council of La Raza President, Marc Morial, National Urban League President, William L.Taylor, Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights Chairman). Not all civil rights groups support NCLB, but these guys do. And they're obviously trying to keep the pressure on to move forward with NCLB reauthorization. This is all fast-moving stuff, though, since the event wasn't even on the EdSec's calendar for this week when they sent it out on Friday.

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I have my fingers crossed that there's going to be another even more interesting piece on TFA coming out in the very near future. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, there's a fascinating and somewhat frightening discussion about the Times Magazine article going on in Chicago -- with some commenters pointing out that TFA is better than nothing and others calling it a "glorified substitute pool" for struggling schools.

A kind reader also sent me this new (to me) report from Stanford (PDF here): "Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits [including TFA], however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others."

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Remember the headline about Teach For America that came out in The Onion a couple of years ago (TFA Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major)? Well, TFA’s come a long way since then, but it is no less frustratingly problematic.

More important, TFA now wants to be judged both as a short-term intervention and as a broad-based reform movement whose scope includes everything from KIPP to Michelle Rhee to scores of alums in elected office.This was either part of the plan all along or a slick “re-engineering” of TFA’s original mission to address widespread concerns that putting smart newbies in front of poor kids for two years wasn’t going to solve any real problems.

One big question is whether or not this two-pronged approach is fair or not to TFA teachers and the kids and colleagues they work with during their brief teaching stints.Another is whether TFA should have been focusing on expanding its members’ longevity and impact in the classroom rather than on increasing its numbers of districts and candidates.Last but not least – the verdict is out here – is whether TFA alums are more powerfully involved in school reform than they would have been anyway, and what good comes of it.

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UPDATE: Here's the big quote: ""The entire appeal equals about eight hours of current spending in Iraq. So just a few hours would send 150,000 children to school..."

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Previous Klein-related posts here and here .

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I was supposed to show you the Kanye West's Ed In '08 promo, which apparently is getting lots of YouTube attention, but was so bored and disappointed by the spot -- perfunctory, obvious, unimaginably forgettable -- that I needed a jolt of West's live performance at the VMA of his new song, Stronger -- whose opening chorus (see below) might actually be a good anthem for Ed In '08.

N-n-now th-that that don't kill me, can only make me stronger.
I need you to hurry up now, cuz I can't wait much longer.
I know I got to be right now, I can't get much stronger (wronger?)
Man I been waiting all night now, that's how long I been on you.
I need ya right now. I need ya right now

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Seething with indignation (if, as usual, not entirely making sense), here's what Andywonk has to say about his love of Hoff, my loose grasp of time and space, etc: Hoff, Russo, & Interns.

Then, in practically his next breath, Andy swoops in with a late, long, and obvious post about the NEA and Miller. Oy. Who's paying for him to do this, again?

UPDATE: Andy takes note of this post but doesn't seem to recognize that the "I must be right" bit (above) is a lampoon of his always-rightness, not a tantrum on my part. You got that, I know, but I'm adding brackets and quotation marks to help out the others.

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"With every passing week, the 110th Congress looks less likely to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the fate of which will therefore hinge on the 2008 election," begins this NRO commentary (No Question Left Behind). "So long as these monster questions lack agreed-upon answers, I don’t see much hope for an NCLB consensus, and I don’t see much hope for NCLB 2.0 anytime soon."

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It sounds like the intro to an MTV reality show: "Eight young people leave the classroom, come to Washington, D.C., and are immersed in the world of education policy." But no, it's actually a program run by the folks at Fordham. And, of course, it has its own blog (here).

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The use of interns is a delicate thing, which is why by and large I've limited the ones I've worked with to morning news roundups and describing events they attend -- extremely useful tasks but not ones that presume any inside knowledge or policy chops. Not so The Quick & The Ed, which is letting interns post commentary like this recent post, which begins "Flipping through my 10th grade U.S. history text book..." Who has their 10th grade history text nearby? A junior at Brown does. Which is fine -- it's just not something I'm expecting to see published by a relatively new organization that's trying to be taken seriously.

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UPDATE: Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform makes some interesting if slightly over-enthusiastic observations here, and helpfully rounds up other reactions to the Times story.

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You may or may not think it's significant that there's another new NCLB-related organization. Hard to keep up with how many there are these days. But this one includes a pretty diverse set of players including the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, La Raza, NCEA, the Citizens' Commission, and the Ed Trust. And it's pretty staunchly in favor of keeping, if not strengthening, NCLB.

Of course, other folks who might help get something done -- CAP, Fordham, New America, CEP, etc. -- aren't signed on, either because they officially "don't do" advocacy or because they think it'd be more fun and/or better for kids if NCLB didn't get strengthened along the lines it was originally enacted. For them, it's all about bringing on the national standards, the increasingly Byzantine growth model ideas, the new programs, the carve-outs and the exceptions. Just getting NCLB done better doesn't really help them any. It's not their thing.

UPDATE: To give you a sense of where the dividing lines are, note that CAP (the Center on American Progress) signed onto last week's warning letter to the House, which I posted about earlier this week, but didn't sign onto this group.

Continue reading "Civil Rights & Business Groups Join Together To Fight For NCLB" »

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From today's Washington Examiner, via The Quick And The Ed:

Communications breakdown caused boxes of sporting goods, computers and other essential equipment to be left padlocked in a shuttered District of Columbia junior high school for almost an entire year while a neighboring school was starved for supplies, a city consultant told The Examiner.

From the June 21 edition of The Nation:

The [bus route] chaos was caused in large part by the financial consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, an outfit the department hired without competitive bidding at $16 million to find $200 million from the [New York City] department's budget to divert directly into the schools...The net savings for all this grief: $5 million, far less than what was originally estimated.

I'm not saying that district folks always get it right -- just that high-priced consultants are no guarantee of efficiency and performance either.

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While the Gates Foundation continues to influence education reform near and far (just this week strong-arming the LAUSD school board), no one really seems to have a complete picture of who's who and who does what in their education division these days.

So here's your chance to show off what you know, individually and as a group, by sharing who does what out there and in the states. Phillips? Shelton? Sanford? Bailey? Fleischauer et al at GMMB? Together, maybe we can piece it all together.

Continue reading "Who's In Charge Of What At The Gates Foundation? No One Knows." »

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Over at the Dallas Morning News, Josh Benton's got the drop on some apparent misdeeds at the Texas Education Agency. No surprise there, except that the misdeeds may include the Gates Foundation (TEA: Agency officials got friends contracts). It's no secret that the Gates folks of late have been getting involved in state-level advocacy work. A reasonable strategy, I'd say. But their Texas guy, Jimmy Wynn, seems to have gotten over-involved, shall we say. Via EdNews.org.

While we're on the subject of foundations and nonprofits, there's a new report from the Urban Institute that some would do well to read: Insular Boards Guide Many Nonprofits. "Many nonprofit boards are cut off from the public they serve by an ethnically homogeneous membership and a failure to engage in externally oriented activities," according to the report.

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Eduwonk tries to make light of being called smug (and intentionally bewildering) in a recent letter to the Washington Post (The Reviews Are In!). But the description isn't that far off. Ever more, Eduwonk's never wrong, never unsure, never not in the know. All that from a meager year spent turning off the lights at the end of the Clinton administration.

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Continue reading "School Reform Outsider Hired To Run DC Schools" »

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Over at the PEN NewsBlast, they're worried about how to get more folks into public service. Me, I just want to know how much people make. Government salaries have long been public record, and apparently now you can get at least some salary information for nonprofits and foundations from GuideStar by looking at organization's IRS form 990. Ever wondered what Wendy Kopp makes, or your local program officer? Who's the highest-paid education ED? I don't know yet. But it's fun looking around on a hot Friday afternoon.

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There was no really big news at the NSVF summit in New Orleans, but I did learn some things, large and small: For example, Internet access at the Ritz costs $275 per person but a secret helper helped me out (thanks!).

There was lots of talk about engaging with the public side, but there were few public-sector (SEA, LEA, school-level) folks there to provide a reality check. There was lots of talk about a "diversified provider" model of school district (ie, district plus charter schools). However, no one can really agree on what a "turnaround" school is yet (they're working on it). I still don't understand the difference between venture philanthropy and the regular kind, except that it is younger, whiter, and has much cooler clothes.

What about the people? Well, everybody knew everybody else, except me (well some nice folks did come up and say hi -- Barbara Bennett, for example, and charter schools guru Nelson Smith). Lots of smarts in the room, that much was clear. So far, at least, Steve Barr from Green Dot won't start charters in the Valley, much less outside LA. Rick Hess changes clothes frequently. Ben Wildavsky is grantmaking up a storm in his newish job at Kauffman. New Leaders' Jon Schnur is living down here, temporarily, and just had a baby girl. Thad Nodine (from ISKME) knows all the best hangouts outside the Quarter. Michael Bennett (from Denver) seems to think out loud -- sometimes at length. Temp Keller is looking for a star to run RISE Chicago. It seems like Andy Rotherham is always thinking a mile a minute. Mike Petrilli wants to "swap" AYP for HQT (why not?). Paul Vallas might be John Lithgow's long-lost brother (credit: GT). Nice to see Lincoln Kaplan and many others.

What else? NSNO's Sarah Usdin throws a great Derby Party. Cochon just won a James Beard award for best restaurant in the South (great drinks, too). Crawfish boils on a cool night are a good thing (thanks, ML). Next year, they're going to be in DC.

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After all these years, some education entrepreneurs are still struggling with the need to engage with "them" -- the public and political entities that govern public education. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't). For that reason, the tone was calm, but the challenges presented at the opening NSVF session that just finished this morning in New Orleans were actually quite pointed. Moderated by Andy Rotherham, the session focused on whether and how the education philanthropy community and its beneficiary groups can more so in the future engage with and make a difference in the rest of the education world, rather than working on the margins in single schools, programs, and networks. This challenge brought up issues of scale, human capital, and rhetoric, about which not everyone agreed. Former Virginia governor Mark Warner urged the community to get into the education system rather than just partnering with it or working around it. Denver superintendent Michael Bennett, recently profiled in The New Yorker, detailed the challenges of community engagement and called for reformers to turn charters back on the system as a reform lever rather than continue working on them as an escape valve. Dacia Toll from Achievement First responded that scale was not the problem for her and other charter proponents, but rather quality.

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I'm down in New Orleans at the New Schools Venture Fund annual summit -- the Davos weekend of education, some would say. (Others would say it's the convening of fancy suits out to destroy public education, starting with NOLA.) So far, everyone's been nice to me, and I did have to beg to get an invitation, but of course that won't stop me from biting the hand that feeds me if the self-importance level gets too high (or my sugar level gets too low). So far, I've seen NLNS's Jon Schnur, tanned but not rested, he tells me, run into Lincoln Kaplan and Ben Wildavsky who I last saw at a Spencer Foundation event last summer, and many more who did not want to be named.

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Over at TQATE, Sara calls my analysis of the Gates / Broad thing overly long and way off base, but ducks (at length) the issue of whether she thinks ED In '08 is going to work or not. Ditto for Eduwonk, who's maintained an uncharacteristic radio silence on this one for over a week now. There's a good reason for this, of course. Only a crazy person would criticize an initiative funded by philanthropists as deep-pocketed as Gate$ and Broad.

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The Fordham Foundation's Mike Petrilli doesn't seem exactly sure what to say about the Ed Trust's recent NCLB recommendations (here), which include a provision that would give some states with stronger achievement a little more time past 2014 to get to 100 percent. He praises the Trust -- cautiously -- for finally seeing the light (as he so recently did that I still can't quite forget it). But he's worried about several other recommendations, and also about the Trust's inordinate influence over the process, which pushes other education groups right and left out of the way. What Petrilli's analysis leaves out is that the Trust is effective because it does what few others do: it rolls up its sleeves and works on the law , while everyone else sits back and writes commentaries from afar. If Fordham (or anyone else) wants to have the kind of influence the Trust has -- which I'm not actually sure it does -- it will have to do the same. It will have to work for it.

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Joe Williams, the freelance journalist, education writer, and author of NYC-focused blog The Chalkboard, is quitting mainstream journalism and the blogosphere (for now) and getting into politics as head of Democrats for Education Reform, a group that I never heard of until last week when "Who The Hell Is" Whitney Tilson told me about it.

Not to be confused with the Black Crusaders, Democrats For Education Reform are a "nascent political organization that aims to move the Democratic Party to embrace genuine school reform," according to Tilson. But it's not exactly new -- except to me. You can find out more about it from this 2006 presentation by Tilson at a Jackson Hole Institute conference. Robert Gordon is involved, directly or as inspiration. There's also a 2005 mention of DFER listing Amy Wilkins as ED, whose main focus as I recall was supporting pro-choice Democratic candidates and getting the charter cap raised in NY.

The charter cap in New York has recently been increased. Wilkins is back at the Ed Trust where she belongs. Williams will be that organization's executive director, trying to more formally work "to make the Democrats a little more interesting on the education reform issue." Congrats and condolences.

Continue reading "Journalist Joe Williams Joins Newish Pro-Charter Democratic Group" »

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I'm always seeing interesting new approaches in housing and education policy -- this one (here) about giving hard-core homeless folks a place to stay (even if they're not clean and sober) is from the PBS NewsHour on Friday. What's the education equivalent, I wonder? Coming up with new alternatives for chronic truants rather than trying to bring them back into schools? Setting up special kinds of schools for kids with particular needs -- immigrants, high-mobility kids -- rather than trying to make everyone do everything the same way?

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In this week's column (Looking at KIPP, Coolly and Carefully), Mathews tries to get ahead of the news trend that's slowly leaking out about KIPP's dropout rates and spate of breakups (now numbering six). He rightly points out that the media are the ones doing most of the hyping -- desperate for success stories and things that seem new and different. But Mathews struggles to hide his enthusiasm even in the role of cool critic, and in reality it's more than that -- it's foundations pouring money into the KIPP approach and think tanks touting them as miracle solutions. I'm not against KIPP, but I have been warning against all the hype surrounding the rapidly-expanding network of KIPP schools for weeks and months now.

Related Posts: The Return Of The Hype Warning System, Jay Mathews On The HotSeat, KIPP Co-Founder Mike Feinberg On The HotSeat, NYT Magazine's Paul Tough On The HotSeat.

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What about the Think Tank Research Project? My sense is the project, while well intended, is problematically located at an ed school and seems to take aim exclusively at right-leaning reports rather than an even mix. We need something that's situated independently, staffed with knowledgeable individuals, and takes on bad research wherever it might show up -- at think tanks left and right, at universities, or from research firms.

Related Posts: Think Tank "Truthiness", ‘Truthiness in Education’ (Letters)

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Over at the Cato blog site, Andrew Coulson says that education research suffers from the absence of any focus on development or application focus (Cato-at-liberty � Where’s the “D”?): "In other fields, there is a powerful market incentive for applied research. It’s R and D, not just R, and the only justification for the former is the latter." I'm not sure if I agree with his entire argument, but it's interesting to think about what ed research would look like if it were more focused on developing practical applications.

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It's a sensible-sounding move that drives yet another nail in the coffin of Congressionally-created national tests -- for now at least: "Nine states have come together for the first time to develop a common high school math test, a move described by some as a step toward national educational standards," according to this AP story (here). "The states are Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island."

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Some things you might not have seen before, courtesy of Baird & Co's business-oriented Class Notes (PDF): "In its annual report on preschool funding, “The State of Preschool 2006: State Preschool Yearbook,” the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) found that states are equally as likely to cut public funding for preschool education as they are to increase funding".... and... "only two states, Oklahoma (70%) and Georgia (51%) enrolled more than half of the four-year olds in their state."

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If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the good folks at Fordham should feel mighty flattered. Riffing off of the Gadfly's annual April Fool's edition (which this year featured a pretend blog written by Checker who hates blogs), someone's decided to come up with a pretend blog making fun of the pretend blog.

Called Double Checked ("Standards-Based Blogging At Its Finest"), it's double pretend, which is almost like being real. Here's the "real" Gadfly blog. Like George Clooney says, it wasn't me.

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The Ed Trust has hired a new communications director, snagging Stephanie Germeraad from NAGB, where she was a public affairs specialist. Her predecessor, Fredreka Schouten, had come from Gannett and is now the money and politics reporter at USA Today. Congrats to all involved.

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Continue reading "Reform-Minded Union Leader Named To Broad Board" »

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This notice from the Center on American Progress Action Fund reminds me that the Center, like pretty much every think tank and advocacy outfit in town, is vying for visibility and at least the appearance of influence over the Presidential candidates and their positions. ("Look, candidate X has proposed something like what we told him or her to!")

However, contrary to early impressions (mine, at least), it seems like CAP is not just going to be Hillary's shop. Obama and staff have participated in CAP education events, as well. Which makes sense, given all the Clintonistas and experience they have over there (Cindy Brown, et al). But that means that other folks (Brookings/ Hamilton, CEP, Alliance4Ed, New America, Ed Sector) may have to fight tooth and nail to be in the game. To the extent that there is a game. Or I'm totally wrong.

Previous Posts: Battling Democratic Think Tanks: EPI vs. Brookings, Not Another Center-Left Think Tank. and Piling On The Democratic Think Tanks.

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As I've said before, it seems to me that there is just too much hype and too much growth in state preK programs -- leading to a bandwagon mentality and an almost inevitable quality crunch:

Many states don’t track pre-K students AP
Fourteen years ago, Georgia launched a publicly funded pre-kindergarten program, the first in the nation to offer free classes to all 4-year-olds. But don’t ask state officials for data on how many of those students graduated from high school and went on to college this past fall. They didn’t keep track. Via CJC.

New National Report on State Pre-K Gets Covered Early Stories
The fourth annual report from the National Institute on Early Education Research came out this week and it generated some good stories around the country.

Previous posts: Pre-K On The Cheap In FLA...And Elsewhere?, What To Do About Universal Pre-K?.

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DonorsChoose, the innovative online outfit that matches up small donors (often individuals) with classroom projects, is going national this year, having experienced tremendous growth and success in Chicago, New York, and...some other places. Click below for some of my previous posts (from the old blog). Iif any of you have any experiences or thoughts about DC, feel free to weigh in. Congrats to the DCers. Keep on making the old school education foundations sweat.

Continue reading "Micro-Donations Go Macro" »

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Too many over-familiar names (Ravitch, Hess, Petrilli, etc) and somewhat predictable conclusions, but still there's lots of interesting stuff in the latest issue of Ed Next, including Selling Software (How vendors manipulate research and cheat students"), (Why Big Impact Entrepreneurs Are Rare (The dangers of challenging power), Debunking a Special Education Myth(Don't blame private options for rising costs), Blink. Think. Blank. Bunk. (Solid snap judgments are deeply grounded). Check it out.

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There's only so long you can maintain an incoherent position let the blog-gnats keep biting at you before you have to swat them down, even if you're a big bad Washington think tank. (I mean "bad" in the good sense, as in powerful.)

And so, barely beating the happy hour rush, Fordhamites Finn and Petrilli sent over a new commentary in which they, far as I can tell, re-explain their highly nuanced feelings on NCLB and describe how misunderstood they've been.

Now this is fun.

Continue reading "How The Fordham Foundation Is Like Hillary Clinton: They Both Refuse To Apologize" »

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New New America higher ed guy Stephen Burd takes an unfortunately predictable and under-nuanced swipe at the University of Phoenix and for profit higher ed companies in general in his post Fed Up at the University of Phoenix.

In the piece, Burd rehashes the discredited NYT story from earlier this month, describes in broad terms other complaints about for profit postsecondary education outfits (Wall Street = bad), and calls for close Congressional scrutiny.

Come on, Stephen, you're at New America now. Blaming Wall Street and slamming for-profits without acknowledging the massive problems facing higher ed in general (tuition costs, lending practices, lack of accountability to name a few) seems like something that'd come out of some other, less interesting think tank.

Previous Posts: More On The Times Story On Graduation Rates, Did The NYT Get It Wrong On The University Of Phoenix?, Troubled For-Profit University Raises Questions For Traditional Institutions As Well.

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Over at Eduwonk, Andy links to the back-and-forth about teachers unions that's going on between Apple bigwig Steve Jobs and his counterpart at Dell (Eduwonk.com: No Apple For Teacher). It's interesting to note that the Gates Foundation -- as opposed to Gates the individual -- has thus far come across as basically neutral on unions.

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Over at Small Talk, Mike Klonsky takes the flip-flop idea a little further (Finn, Fordham, Flip-flop). According to Klonsky, "Finn and friends have recently done an about-face and have become enemies of NCLB, after years of pushing it on schools and school districts....Finn ("Fool me twice") has suddenly figured it all out. You see, NCLB is trying to force standardization and compliance on schools and educators and that just won't work....It was only last June that Finn personally attacked Jonathan Kozol for his hostile anti-NCLB stand."

Posted by Alexander Russo at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Usually thought of as either all-important or ridiculously out of touch, philanthropy is increasingly diverse, occasionally innovative, and important for educators and the media to understand. Starting with a Jonathan Alter piece on DonorsChoose, here's a slate of Slate articles to help the cause: A nonprofit works marketplace magic. Four years ago, my office phone at Newsweek rang: a cold call from Charles Best, a 26-year-old Yale graduate who was teaching in a public school in the Bronx....By the end of the call, I knew I had seen the future of American philanthropy. Making philanthropy cool.From education to health care to energy to wealth disparity to the environment, we're living proof that being a rich nation doesn't necessarily make us a great one. Are foundations elitist, anti-democratic, and in danger of losing their tax exemptions?. Lincoln Caplan takes on funders' inscrutable tendencies, and the newish notion of "giving while living."

Previous Posts:
Learning From Their Mistakes
Gates Enters The 2008 Campaign
MySpace For Educators
Can Micro Donations Make A Difference?

Posted by Alexander Russo at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This makes Burd what, the thousandth education reporter to get out of the newsroom in the last few years. Congrats and condolences to all.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm up at an education conference at the Yale School Of Management and what jumps out at me so far is (a) just how frighteningly big "mainstream" interest in education reform has gotten. (the opening speaker actually warned folks off of getting into education just because it's so "sexy" right now.); (b) just how easy and appealing it is to work in education without working IN education (ie, foundation, nonprofit, private sector work, vs. district, state, federal or advocacy work -- or, god forbid, school-level work); and (c) just how much better-looking in person Paul Tough and MaryEllen McGuire are ("He's gorgeous," one admirer whispered to me.) More to come.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a time, there didn't seem to be anyone who got more stuff into more legislation than the Ed Trust's Amy Wilkins, who was notoriously good at doing the Vulcan mind-meld with Congressional staff (including me) and powerful lawmakers (like Miller). It was crazy, as was the amount of positive press that the Trust got during those days. K12, higher ed, they were everywhere.

Then Wilkins went off to do a few other things -- early childhood, charter school cap stuff, etc., and the Trust kept pushing along but not, it seemed to me, quite as powerfully as before.

But now she's back, according to the Ed Trust press release this week. Now titled Vice President for Government Affairs and Communications, she likes the Aspen Institute's highly qualified effective teacher idea. Will Wilkins and the Trust rise again to influence NCLB 2 like last time around? It's not yet clear. But I wouldn't bet against it.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No big ideas for the Ed Sector's Sara Mead, thank you very much. She says she prefers "small-bore ones" instead. And then she cryptically links to yet another DC schools article -- enough already -- without really making any point.

Mead's knee-jerk disdain for "big, flashy ideas" like amending the Constitution to make education a Constitutional right might be understandable if it weren't so obviously ill-considered, if we weren't already so used to the Ed Sector's tendency towards quick dismissals of any ideas that aren't "theirs," and if Mead's boss Andy hadn't just the day before highlighted a very similar provision as something that could "radically alter education accountability."

Creating a new right of action for parents sounds pretty big -- and pretty similar -- to me. It probably won't happen, either. Neither did opportunity to learn standards (remember those?) or national testing (so far). But that's not really the point. Good and bad, viable or not in the current situation, big ideas give us a better sense of the far edges of the table we're playing on, instead of always playing on the same two-inch square in the middle all day.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Changing the way districts give out funding to schools so that the funds are more equitable and better targeted is a technocrat's dream, especially if it leads to a better distribution of highly qualified teachers and ends the hidden subsidy to schools with all-star faculties that has long plagued urban education. But, as this post from Chicago shows, changing funding schemes is no easy task. As reported in the February Catalyst Magazine, the district tried to pilot a change last year, only to be fought off, and is trying again this year. And as you can see in the reader responses on the issue the opposition is going to be intense. (See here).

Posted by Alexander Russo at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pretty much every company out there has some do-gooder initiative going on these days, whether it's VH1's "Save The Music" campaign or Wal-Mart's "We Really Care" (I made that one up). But who knew that Hooters had one, too? Thanks to eagle-eyed Howie Schaffer from the PEN Newsblast, now we do:

"Hooters Restaurants "Wings for Children" program is underway once again at all Chicago area locations, raising money for the Holy Family Lutheran School through proceeds from the sales of their world famous chicken wings. In 2005, Hooters raised $33,000 for the school. Almost $170,000 total has been raised since the program's inception in 1995."

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm conflicted, I admit it. Sometimes I want big ideas and complain at the small-mindedness we all get stuck in, and other times I'm overwhelmed by big ideas I can't really grasp. Looking at this KnowledgeWorks/ Institute For the Future map is one of the latter times, unfortunately. Called the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education, the map (a 2-pp PDF, actually) charts dilemmas and trends in various categories. Let me know if you find anything good on it, and thanks to the friend who sent it in to me. Here's the site. Clearly I need more coffee.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everybody knows that I can barely count, much less do statistical regressions, but I do know some folks who are good at that stuff. Having looked at that recent Fordham report on state achievement levels, one of them sent in handy-dandy spreadsheet that -- I'm told -- shows a negative relationship between the grades Fordham give the states on math and NAEP performance on math. "The higher the Fordham score, the lower the NAEP score." You can see the spreadsheet here.

Got anything good to send in?
Send it to us at thisweekineducation@gmail.com.

UPDATE: The quick-response team at Fordham says that changes over time, demographic differences between states, and the alignment of the math NAEP with the NCTM standards explain the above. Click below for the details.

Continue reading "Fordham Math Grades Vs. NAEP Math Achievement" »

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I frankly don't get what Eduwonk Andy gets out of banging so hard and long (and at times unreasonably) on the teachers unions, especially the AFT, as he seems to be doing again these days (with what little time he seems to have for blogging).

His latest play, citing the support of other noneducation bloggers, might seem at first to be a sign of self-importance or a way of "settling" an argument, but it doesn't really have that effect -- who cares what Alterman says -- and has some of the feel of bringing in the calvary (or your big brother).

Continue reading "Andy & The Unions, Again And Again" »

Posted by Alexander Russo at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Those crazy folks at the SEED Foundation are looking for someone to run their new Baltimore school -- a college-prep, public boarding school for students in grades 6-12. "The Head of School for Maryland will have a tremendous opportunity to create a brand new school, with the benefits of relying on proven aspects of SEED’s first school program, as well as the resources, funding and community support that you and we have developed over the past 10 years." Tell them Alexander sent you.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

National standards expert Kevin Kosar writes in with the following guest column on the current national standards debate:

While researching my dissertation on the politics of education standards just a few years ago, I conducted a number of interviews with smart people in the education policy world.

One of them was Checker Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

Just over four years ago, Checker graciously fit me into his dense schedule and we spoke at length.

When I raised the question of national standards, Checker responded, that “nobody wants” national standards and that idea “isn’t even being discussed.”

Continue reading "Guest Columnist Kevin Kosar: Do National Standards Have A Chance?" »

Posted by Alexander Russo at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Over at The Quick and The Ed, Kevin Carey riffs off a recent Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker about the Enron investigation to make the point that analyzing and interpreting existing information (like the Education Sector does) is increasingly important in a world filled with lots of data but relatively little understanding. Carey's post (Mysteries, Puzzles, & Think Tanks) lays out an argument that is unusually elegant.

What he leaves out, however, is how difficult it is for think tanks to do good analysis and be influential on policy and advocacy at the same time. The two functions do not go well together, and outfits that try and do both -- or get the balance wrong -- are easily dismissed even if the underlying analysis is perfectly responsible.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several folks have pointed out that the scrutiny and criticism surrounding Oprah's school has been exaggerrated, sexist, and perhaps even racist. This article from Salon.com (What Oprah can't forget) takes that argument one step further and tries to figure out where the hypocrisy surrounding wealth and philanthropy comes from -- and why Oprah created such a lavish school. Previous posts here and here. You have to watch a short ad to read the entire article.

Posted by Alexander Russo at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)